5 of Olympics greatest controversies

List includes 1972 men's basketball final among others

The high before the low: Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson celebrates Olympic gold in the 100 meters, a medal that would later be taken away because of a positive steroids test. (File Photo)

The Olympic Games offer competitors the chance to bathe in national glory and international acclaim. The victors — indeed, all the athletes who aspire to victory — are celebrated in the Olympic motto of "Citius, Altius, Fortius."

Faster, higher, stronger.

Yet celebration and aspiration sometimes share the Olympic spotlight with controversy, with scandal and with athletes who train and compete outside the bounds of Citius, Altius and Fortius. One ranking of the 10 least-pure moments in the history of the Summer Games:

No. 5 (1988): Roy Jones Jr. of the United States dominated the three-round light-middleweight championship fight. That he would win was a foregone conclusion. He landed 86 blows; opponent Park Si-hun of South Korea landed 32. These Games were in Seoul, and one judge told Sports Illustrated he "voted for the Korean" so the boxers from the host country would not be shut out. But two of the other four judges favored Park as well, giving him the gold medal in a decision that triggered this commentary in the French newspaper L'Equipe: "Scandalous. To vomit." Park reportedly admitted he had lost the fight, but he did not return the medal. The decision stood — yet Jones was selected as the most outstanding boxer of the Olympics.

No. 4 (1956): As the Hungarian water polo team left for Melbourne to defend its gold medal, Hungary withdrew from the Warsaw Pact and declared itself a free and independent country. By the time the team arrived at the Olympics three weeks later, the Soviet Union had invaded Hungary and crushed the rebellion. The Hungarians played on, and drew the Soviets in the water polo semifinals. "We were yelling at them, 'You dirty bastards. You come over and bomb our country,' " Hungarian star Ervin Zador told the BBC, "They were calling us traitors." Hungary led 4-0 when a Soviet player pummeled Zador so severely that blood streamed from above his eye. The match was stopped, with pro-Hungarian fans threatening to storm the playing area and fight with the Soviet team. Zador's injury forced him to sit out the gold-medal game, which Hungary won, but the semifinal has been immortalized as the "Blood in the Water" game.

No. 3 (1976): The light went on whenever the sword made contact with the opponent. Get a hit, trigger the light. That was fencing. But how could the light go off when there was no hit? That was what Britain's modern pentathlon team wanted to know when two of its competitors complained that Boris Onischenko of the Soviet Union was getting credit for mythical hits. An examination of Onischenko's sword revealed he could push a concealed button and trigger the light whenever he wanted. He was disqualified, and the nickname wrote itself in headlines around the world: "Disonischenko."

No. 2 (1988): "I'd like to say my name is Benjamin Sinclair Johnson Jr. and this world record will last 50 years, maybe 100." That is how Canada's Ben Johnson opened the news conference after winning gold in the men's 100 meters in Beijing, obliterating the previous record with a time of 9.79 seconds. He was stripped of the gold medal three days later, after testing positive for steroids, the biggest name to be caught in Olympic drug testing. Carl Lewis of the U.S. was declared the winner, with a runner-up 9.92 that set an Olympic record. It was not until 1999 that Maurice Greene ran the first legitimate 9.79. Jamaica's Usain Bolt holds the current world record of 9.58.

No. 1 (1972): The United States never had lost a men's basketball game in the Olympics, and three seconds were all that stood between the U.S. and another gold medal. The Americans led 50-49. The Soviet Union inbounded the ball, and time ran out. But a British official from the international basketball federation — in the stands, not on the court — ordered three seconds restored, ostensibly the time left when the Soviets tried to call time out. Again the clock ran out, and again three seconds were ordered restored, this time because the clock allegedly had not been properly reset. Alexander Belov converted a long pass into the winning basket, the Americans' record in the Olympics fell to 63-1 and the U.S. team refused to accept its silver medals. The medals remain locked in a Swiss vault.

Sources for this report included the Guardian's "50 Stunning Olympic Moments" and David Wallechinsky's "The Complete Book of the Olympics."